Boston Logan to Downtown: Silver Line, Taxi and Ferry

The Silver Line SL1 is still free from Logan to downtown Boston, no ticket and no tap, according to both mbta.com and massport.com when I checked them on August 19, 2026. That’s the headline, and it’s true, but it’s not the whole story. The free ride only covers you as far as South Station. Taxis carry a $2.75 airport toll stacked on top of the meter. Uber and Lyft don’t pick up at the curb at all. Here’s what actually works for each situation, not just the one everyone mentions first.

Logan sits inside the city, which is the good news: there’s no forty-minute slog through suburbs before you reach a train. The less obvious part is that “close” doesn’t mean “one clear way in.” Five different operators run people between the terminals and downtown, and most of them don’t tell you what the other four are doing.

Five ways in, side by side

The Silver Line’s free ride, and where free stops

MBTA’s own fare page still said “service from Logan Airport is always free” the day I checked it, and Massport’s transportation page backs that up almost word for word. The SL1 picks up at every terminal curb, no signage runaround, and drops you at South Station in the Financial District, with stops at Courthouse and World Trade Center in the Seaport along the way. You don’t need a CharlieCard, a phone wallet, or a plan. You get on and you go.

The catch, such as it is: that free ride covers the SL1 leg itself, not the whole system. If your hotel is past South Station and you’re continuing on the subway, you’ll tap a CharlieCard or a contactless card like everyone else. And if you’re heading to the airport rather than from it, the free part is narrower still - it’s specifically the transfer from the Red Line onto the SL1 that costs nothing, not a free ride across town. You still pay to board the Red Line in the first place.

This rule has shifted before, which is exactly why the date above matters more than the fact itself. If you’re reading this well past 2026, give mbta.com/destinations/logan-airport thirty seconds before you plan a whole arrival around it.

There’s also a Blue Line option most first-time visitors skip past entirely. A free Massport shuttle bus, routes 22, 33, 55 and 66, runs from every terminal to Airport station, where a normal subway fare gets you into the North End, Government Center and the Financial District from the other direction. It isn’t faster than the Silver Line, but it lands somewhere different, which matters if your hotel is closer to Charlestown or the North End than to the Seaport.

A cab meter with an extra toll built in

Taxi stands sit on the arrivals level at Terminals A, B, C and E, with a dispatcher on hand and signage pointing to Ground Transportation and Taxi. Boston doesn’t run a flat-rate box into downtown the way some other airports do. You’re on the meter, and the meter is oddly granular: the Boston Police Department’s own rate sheet prices the first 1/7 of a mile at $2.60, then $0.40 for every 1/7 mile after that, plus $28 an hour for time spent idling in traffic. Stacked on the meter is a $2.75 toll that applies specifically to trips between Boston proper and Logan (the same toll covers North Shore trips; it doesn’t apply going the other way, from Boston to East Boston, minus the airport itself).

That combination of frequent small clicks and a traffic-based waiting charge is why nobody, including the police department, publishes one clean number for “the fare downtown.” A quiet ride at 10 p.m. and a crawl through the Ted Williams Tunnel on a Friday at 5 p.m. aren’t close to the same price, even though the map distance barely changes. Tip is separate from all of it.

Don’t get in a cab from someone working the arrivals hall or the upper departure roadway who isn’t at an official stand. Massport is specific about that warning, for a reason.

Uber and Lyft skip the curb

Open the app after baggage claim, not before, because the pickup point depends on which terminal you’re leaving from, and none of them is the curb you just walked out of. Terminals A, C and E route ride-app pickups through the Central Parking Garage; Terminal B riders go up to Level 2 of the Terminal B Parking Garage. Signage says “Ride App” or “Uber/Lyft,” and it’s a real walk with bags, not a five-step curb hop.

Price is whatever the app shows you at that moment. Logan doesn’t publish a fixed rideshare fare the way it does for the SL1 or the ferry, and demand pricing during rush hour is common. Weigh that quote against the meter-plus-toll taxi and the free Silver Line before you tap confirm, especially if you’re traveling solo with one bag - the T is genuinely hard to beat on price for that specific case, and it skips the garage walk entirely.

If a late flight, a family with car seats, or a pile of luggage makes the garage walk sound miserable, a pre-booked private transfer solves the same problem as a rideshare without the pickup-spot guesswork - you get a price and a driver assigned before you land.

The ferry almost nobody mentions

Most people never consider a boat to reach a hotel, which is a shame, because Logan has one and it isn’t a novelty act. The MBTA runs a Harbor Loop Ferry connecting the airport’s Water Transportation Dock to Long Wharf, the Seaport at Commonwealth Pier, and North Station, plus a Hingham/Hull line that Massport lists as running daily. Every one of those inter-harbor hops costs $2.40 each way, the same as a subway ride, and kids 11 and under ride free. A free Route 66 shuttle bus covers the short hop between the dock and the terminals on both ends.

The seasonal part: routes to Quincy and Winthrop run only roughly spring through late November, and Massport’s own page is a little inconsistent about exact year-to-year dates, so treat “seasonal” as the operating fact and confirm the current window on mbta.com before you build a trip around it. The year-round Hingham/Hull and Harbor Loop routes don’t have that problem.

If you’d rather have door-to-door than a scheduled stop, Boston Water Taxi runs on-demand service to downtown, Charlestown, East Boston and the Seaport. Call ahead (617-406-8584) and build in at least 35 minutes before you need to be at security, since it’s a reservation, not a walk-up ride.

Logan Express, if your bed isn’t downtown

None of the above matters much if you’re not actually staying downtown. Logan Express runs direct buses from five locations, suburban and in-town, straight to the lower level of every terminal: Back Bay, Braintree, Danvers, Framingham and Woburn. At the four suburban stops, park for $7 a day and buy a $9 one-way ticket online (that fare’s flagged as a limited-time rate on Massport’s own site, so don’t assume it holds forever). Kids ride free with a ticketed adult.

Back Bay is the one worth knowing even if you aren’t driving in: it’s an in-town stop next to the Amtrak and commuter rail station, tickets to the airport run just $3, and the ride back into town is free. Anyone landing at Logan and heading toward Back Bay, the South End or Fenway has a cheaper, more direct option here than most visitors ever find out about.

The free Silver Line is the right call often enough that it’s worth defaulting to it and reaching for the alternatives only when you have a specific reason: bags too heavy for a garage walk, a flight that lands well after the subway winds down for the night, or a hotel that Logan Express reaches more directly than the T does. Boston is one of the few US cities where the cheapest way out of the airport is also the fastest for most arrivals, and that’s not worth giving up for an app quote you never bothered to compare.

Once you’re downtown, things to do in Boston and where to stay in Boston pick up from here. If Logan isn’t your only option into New England, which airport for the USA lines up Boston’s free Silver Line next to what JFK, LAX and O’Hare charge for the same first mile.